Mr. Robot Finale Reveals the Fate of Tyrell Wellick

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[Warning: Contains spoilers for the Mr. Robot finale. Watch the full episode here.]

After weeks of speculation about Tyrell Wellick, the Mr. Robot finale delivered the answer to a burning fan question: yes, Tyrell is alive -- and he is most definitely real.

In a finale post-mortem interview with The Hollywood Reporter, showrunner Sam Esmail confirmed Tyrell's status, and stressed the importance of delivering closure on the much-theorized whereabouts and condition of the character.

"That was, to me, the season's arc," Esmail told THR. "After Elliot's head-trip, that he goes inside himself and inside this illusion that he uses to cope with the fact that he's been in prison and inside all of this battle and all of the battles he's had with Mr. Robot, it's like the game is over. Elliot has to snap back to reality and literally, it happens with a gunshot, with a bang, by Tyrell."

Like many of the Mr. Robot fans, Elliot questions whether or not it's some kind of mind-trick as Tyrell pulls out a gun and threatens to shoot him. But we've seen what happens when Elliot gets shot by a figment of his imagination, and this time, it's a whole new experience.

"it was imperative that this was the defining real -- and I kind of want to underline that -- moment for Elliot," Esmail explained, "because he's actually been shot twice in the show now. He was shot in episode four of the first season in that fever dream hallucination, and was obviously continually shot in the beginning of this season. This one, we wanted to make it feel very different."

We will definitely be seeing more of Tyrell in season_3.0, Esmail promised, after further diving into the decision to keep Martin Wallström's character mostly absent from this season. Ultimately, Esmail believed that the exploration of Elliot's internal struggle after the revelations in season_1.0 should be the main priority this year.

"[Elliot's] going to struggle with that," Esmail said. "He's not going to be able to engage with life as is. I felt that anything to avoid that would be really disingenuous to his emotional journey. The fact that Tyrell went missing only fed further into the struggle between Elliot and Mr. Robot because Elliot started feeling this tremendous guilt about what he could have possibly done, and his imagination and feelings around that were run amok."